All Over the Map
By: Liz Massey
Older and Wiser
Documentary about lesbian couple offers lessons to LGBT community
I often wonder what my life would have been like had I lived as a lesbian long ago. Having been born a mere six months before Stonewall, I tend to assume that I’m better off because I had the good fortune to come out after that pivotal moment in gay liberation history.
However, this worldview was challenged recently after I watched the 2009 documentary Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement, produced by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir. The love story between the movie’s two principals directly contradicts the notion that those who formed same-sex relationships before Stonewall led diminished, closeted lives.
Thea Spyer met Edie Windsor in the early 1960s in the thriving gay underground of New York City. The two became a couple in 1965 and lived against the backdrop of the burgeoning gay rights movement. Both women nurtured successful careers, Windsor as a computer systems consultant for IBM and Spyer as a psychologist.
Long before many in the gay community even contemplated marriage equality, Spyer dropped down on one knee and proposed to Windsor, offering a diamond pin in lieu of an attention-grabbing engagement ring. 
Even with so much love and good luck, their road together was anything but smooth. Both women experienced searing rejection from their families. Spyer was expelled from the first college she attended after getting caught in a lesbian affair. Both women disliked the tense and sometimes scary atmosphere in New York City’s mob-owned gay bars.
However, all other hurdles paled in comparison to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis that Spyer received in the mid-1970s. Spyer’s chronic-progressive form of the disease reduced her physically from an active, outgoing woman who loved dancing all night long to a quadriplegic.
For some couples, such a diagnosis might bring on intense conflict or incapacitating self-pity. But what becomes obvious from watching this film is that these two women allowed the passionate attraction they felt when they met to forge a powerfully loving bond that sustained them when things got painful.
I’ve learned several significant lessons from watching this movie, ones I think are relevant to anyone who is LGBT or allied with our community.
- Live without shame. Sure, before she began dating Spyer, Windsor did try briefly to go straight. And Spyer, burned by the expulsion during her undergraduate days, went to great lengths to protect her privacy as a closeted doctorate student. But by 2007, when the movie was being filmed, it was obvious that any shame either woman felt about being a lesbian had long since disappeared.
- Learn how to disagree. Both Spyer and Windsor possessed strong personalities. Neither one gave up who she was to be a part of the relationship. When Spyer scheduled herself to see patients during the time the women were supposed to become one of the first couples to receive domestic partnership status in 1993, the normally easy-going Windsor got her back up and insisted they get down to City Hall — and off they went.
- Adapt to what life hands you. MS forced both women to be creative and reinvent activities that they took for granted in the beginning, like dancing together or making love. Because of this flexible mindset, Spyer continued to work well into her 70s, and the couple was able to stay in the house they had purchased long before the illness struck.
- Don’t postpone joy. Windsor and Spyer claimed this saying was posted prominently in their house, but it might as well have been tattooed on their souls. Every scene of the film lays bare this truth that they lived by — whether they’re attending an LGBT gala, walking in a park or cuddling before bed, it’s clear that enjoying each other’s company was their top priority.
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. Windsor and Spyer finally get legally married in Canada, but it’s a bittersweet decision, spurred by Spyer’s health taking a turn for the worst. Still, there’s no tragedy in the fact that the women join in holy matrimony at the end of their lives, not the beginning. They accept their situation, and savor married life for the tiny sliver of time it is available to them.
Becoming acquainted with Windsor and Spyer through this documentary reminded me that I don’t have to wait until full LGBT equality is achieved to revel in my own happy relationship, my uniqueness as a queer individual, or the actions I take to ensure I leave a legacy. Life doesn’t require “ideal” conditions to be lived fully. It simply takes awareness, determination and a deep, deep sense of gratitude.
